A Small Death in lisbon (56 page)

I tried Olivia again on her mobile which was still turned off. Luísa called her father, spoke to him briefly and plugged the computer into the telephone jack and squeezed the first half of the story down the line. Thirty minutes later he called back and Luísa gave him more background about my murder investigation. She hung up.

'He wants some supporting documents. He's not prepared to publish unless it's backed up with some kind of documentary proof.'

I looked at Frau Junge who sipped her tea and shrugged.

'I have photographs, but documents ... you'll have to ask him.'

A red light flashed on the wall by her head with a faint buzzing sound.

'He's awake,' said Frau Junge.

The second half of the story was shorter, but took longer to tell. He needed more breaks. His mind drifted and resettled on details we'd already heard. He kept coming back to a woman called Maria Antónia Medinas, who he was convinced had been killed by Manuel Abrantes. I told him it fitted in with what Jorge Raposo had told me, but we couldn't get him to tell us what she was to him. Was she a fellow-prisoner, a criminal or a political? Had he known her before?

He held things back, whether on purpose or because his brain slid over things, we couldn't tell. It was close to the end before he stunned us with the revelation that he'd been set up by Joaquim Abrantes' PIDE friends, who'd put him inside for twenty years, and that Manuel Abrantes was his son. We asked who the mother was and he couldn't remember her name, but he thought she might be still alive, up in the Beira somewhere.

Dawn came up unspectacularly. The lighthouse stopped flashing and became a foghorn, as a dense sea mist rolled in over the cliffs and submerged the house, so that the gate on the other side of the courtyard was only occasionally visible.

'We have days like this,' said Felsen. 'It wouldn't be so bad if you knew the whole country was like it, but I know that a hundred metres around the corner the sun is shining.'

'There's one last thing,' said Luísa. 'We need some documents if this story is going to mean anything. Have you got documentary proof that the gold existed?'

His hand disappeared under the blankets and came back with a warm key.

'Everything you need is in the metal filing cabinet in the study. Frau Junge will show you.'

We stood up. His hand went out for Luísa's, which she gave him and he pressed it to his lips which made her shudder.

'You've had an extraordinary life,
Senhor
Felsen,' she said, to cover herself.

'We all had big lives then,' he said, looking out at the fog-filled morning. 'Even an
SS-Schütze
could have a big life then, but it might not have been the one he wanted. The twenty years I spent thinking about this in Caxias I wouldn't have minded a smaller life. I wouldn't mind some of my regrets being smaller.'

'And what is your biggest?' asked Luísa.

'Perhaps you are the romantic type. You might think...' he said, and hesitated for a response which Luísa didn't give him. 'Perhaps, after all I've told you, you can tell me what my biggest regret should be?'

She didn't respond. He seemed to deflate.

'It wasn't Eva. It was regrettable that she despised me in the end, but that came about by my own inaction,' he said, and struggled in his blankets for a moment, like a baby. 'The
action
I most regret was
what I did to the English agent, Edward Burton. I don't know why it happened. Over the years I blamed Abrantes for it, I blamed the drink, I've even blamed the Dutch girl for stealing my cufflinks. But after twenty years in Caxias with nothing much else to think about I still couldn't find any reason for it and I've had to come to the conclusion that I had a visit from pure evil.

'I am not,
Senhora
Madrugada,' he said, finally, 'a man with prospects.'

His head went down and we left. In the filing cabinet we found copies of the documents showing the gold's origination. There were also photographs showing Felsen and Joaquim Abrantes and other members of the Abrantes family, including the young Manuel.

Luísa dropped me off in Paço de Arcos. She continued to Lisbon. I had breakfast with António Borrego in his bar, which was empty apart from the two of us.

'You look tired, Zé,' he said, laying out the coffee and buttered toast.

'I had a long night.'

'You didn't eat properly.'

'No.'

'Maybe I should cook something for you.'

'No, this is fine.'

'What was keeping you up all night?'

'Work ... as usual.'

'I heard they raided your house and they've arrested Faustinho.'

I sank my teeth into the toast, sipped some coffee.

'You fell under a tram, too,' he said.

'Fell?'

'I was being diplomatic.'

I wiped molten butter from my chin.

'Is she a girlfriend, the woman who dropped you off just now?'

'The whole world passes before you in here, doesn't it, António?' I said. 'You don't have to go outside. It all comes to you.'

'It's the nature of running a bar,' he said. 'I wouldn't do it if it was just a question of serving drinks.'

I poured more coffee, added milk.

'You were in Caxias, weren't you, at the end there, in 1974?' I asked.

'That was when I used to go out and do things and look what happened.'

'Did you ever hear the name Felsen? Klaus Felsen.'

'We heard about him. He was in for murder. The politicals and the regulars didn't have much to do with each other. They kept us apart.'

'What about a woman called Maria Antónia Medinas?'

Silence. I looked up from my toast. He was pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed.

'I was just thinking,' he said. 'Was she a regular?'

'I don't know. I don't know anything about her. Just the name.'

'She wasn't on the political side ... that I know of.'

'Have you still got friends you could ask?'

'Friends?'

'Well, comrades then,' I said, and he laughed.

I went back to the house and found Olivia in the bathroom, brushing her teeth.

'What happened to you?' I asked, in English.

'I did what my Daddy told me to do,' she said and looked back at the sink, annoyed.

'You spent the night here?'

'That's what you told me to do,' she said. 'Have I been a good
girl?'

'How did you get back?'

'Senhor
Rodrigues brought me back after dinner.'

'On your own?' I said, my hands suddenly ice-cold.

'The others didn't want to come,' she said. 'I felt a complete idiot.'

'What did you talk about with
Senhor
Rodrigues?'

'I don't know. Nothing much.'

'Try and remember,' I said. 'It would help.'

She spat the toothpaste out and swilled her mouth.

'Oh yes, he was asking me about the Smashing Pumpkins.'

'Smashing Pumpkins?'

'They're a band, Dad,' she said, saddened by my lack of cool. 'A popular singing group I think you used to call them in your day.'

Then I told her, without telling her why, she shouldn't spend any more time with the Rodrigues family.

05.30 Friday, 26th June 1998, Paço de Arcos, Lisbon

I was lying in bed unable to sleep, listening to the traffic, smoking cigarettes, reading Fernanda Ramalho's pathology report for the hundredth time. I was two hours away from a media storm that would change my life and now I didn't want it. I wanted the old life back.

It had been a terrible week. I'd assumed when Luísa had said her father, Vitor Madrugada, had a magazine on the blocks that everything was ready and all he had to do was press a button. But he didn't even have a printer and it cost him some very big money to get: one, because printers' presses don't hang around doing nothing waiting for a job—they're running all the time. It took a week. It meant he had time to think.

He'd wanted a big story to launch his new business magazine, and had ended up with something monumental that would stand for as long as the Marquês de Pombal had stood in his
Praça.
He had to be reassured. I had to make a presentation to him, his board of directors including Luísa, and his editor. I had to lay out my entire case against Miguel da Costa Rodrigues and my reasons for attacking him in this fashion.

The editor was nervous. He was an intelligent man, but one who'd come from an age when the media still had respect for public figures, a hangover, perhaps, from the days when journalists were told what to write. To him the
Director-Geral
of the Banco de Oceano e Rocha was a very important man with influential friends and a wife, also from an excellent family, and a very religious woman, whereas Catarina Oliveira...

'I'm not convicting him in this article,' I'd replied. 'I'm just making sure that Miguel Rodrigues also known as Manuel Abrantes comes down to the
Polícia Judiciária
to answer my questions. He's
done everything he can to block this investigation. He's used his friends to make sure that I don't get the information I need about his car. He's had me removed from the case. He's had me pushed under a tram. I've had my home invaded by Narcotics agents and your boss's daughter has had hate messages plastered over her car. We do have some justification.'

The editor had looked at Luísa's father.

'I hope you're right,' Vitor Madrugada had said to me. This is a big story—important families, a dynasty based on Nazi gold, a PIDE murderer, sex, drugs and the killing of an innocent, or rather, a young girl who did not deserve to die. This is a story that will go through Portugal like a forest fire in summer.'

'And you don't want to be perceived as an arsonist.'

'No,' he'd said, 'I don't. And I don't think I am one.'

He'd pressed the button.

I'd left the meeting with elation and dread on either shoulder. I drifted around for a few days. JoJó Silva called me about Lourenço Gonçalves who still hadn't turned up. I told him to file a missing-persons report and I'd make sure it was handled. Carlos and I worked in a desultory fashion on the Xeta murder case with little success.

At 7.00 a.m. I made some coffee and already there was a murmur in the street. In less than ten minutes the
calçada
outside the house was full of journalists and cameramen. I called the PSP station and asked them to send down some men and a car.

At 7.30 a.m. I stepped out into the street and met a barrage of questions and flashlights. I said nothing and set off at a brisk pace to where the PSP were waiting with a car. I led a motorcade into Lisbon to the
Polícia Judiciária
building, where more newsmen were waiting. The PSP car dropped me round the back and I went straight up to Narciso's office. This time I didn't have to wait and it was a very different
Engenheiro
Jaime Leal Narciso on the other side of the door.

He asked me to sit down. He sat on the same side of the desk as me. We smoked. The secretary brought in some coffee. He quietly reinstated Carlos and me as the investigating officers in the case and gave me full permission to bring in Miguel da Costa Rodrigues for questioning.

'I'll want to search his property as well,' I said.

'There's a search warrant already prepared,' he said.

At 07.45 there was a phone call in Narciso's office from Miguel da Costa Rodrigues' lawyer, volunteering to bring his client down for questioning in the
Polícia Judiciária
building.

At 08.15 Miguel da Costa Rodrigues was in the building. His lawyer went out front and delivered an opening statement to the journalists. He denounced the
Polícia Judiciáries
methods of trial by media and clarified the voluntary nature of his client's appearance in the building. He didn't respond to any of the questions that came back at him.

At 08.25 Narciso clapped me on the back and showed me a reassuring fist with which he would help me smash Miguel da Costa Rodrigues. He put on his jacket and went out to the front of the building. He beat the lawyer's statement to a pulp and took eighty-five percent of the credit for the investigation so far, leaving me with fifteen and Carlos with none. He was doing what he was paid for. He was doing what he did best.

At 08.30 Miguel Rodrigues was shown into interrogation room three which had the largest observation window. Some of the men gathering at that window I'd never seen in the building before. It was like a cocktail party in there.

At 08.32 I made the necessary introductions to the tape recorder. Miguel da Costa Rodrigues showed no sign that we'd ever met. He looked like a man who'd prepared a story in his head and it was going to take an earth-mover to get him to deviate from it. He was a PIDE man. He would know about interrogation. My only advantage was that he might not have been on the end of many interrogations himself.

He glanced at the reflective panel set in the wall. His lawyer sat next to him, like a trained hawk, with only the tips of his fingers on the edge of the table. I started by asking
Senhor
Rodrigues to clarify his identity and he calmly revealed that he was Manuel Abrantes and that he'd changed his identity in order to reduce the possibility that his previous employment might reflect against the bank. I didn't ask him to elaborate on that. I didn't want to blur the focus of my opening interview with him.

'Senhor
Rodrigues,' I started, 'where were you at lunchtime, at around 13.00 on Friday June 12th?'

'I was in the Pensão Nuno.'

'What were you doing there?'

'I was watching three people engaged in a sexual act.'

'How?'

'I was in an adjacent room, watching them through a two-way mirror set in the wall.'

'Did you know any of these people?'

'No.'

'Had you seen any of them before?'

He conferred with his lawyer.

'I'd seen the girl before.'

'Where?'

'In the same
Pensão.'

'When?'

'Exactly a week before.'

'Engaged in a sexual act?'

'Yes.'

'How many times have you seen this girl?'

'A few times.'